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HomeStory Cup V: Day 2 Recap and Day 3 Preview

The first group stage of HomeStory Cup is behind us, and not without a couple of upsets to that. Today, the best sixteen will go through the second stage of Krefeld’s culling to determine who will make the playoffs on Sunday.

MC was absolutely merciless in his domination of Group E, as it is expected from a reigning HSC champion. The Boss Toss passed like a tornado through his opponents and left HasuObs, Tarson and TLO scuffle for the runner-up spot, each of them with 1-2 in series.

The unsung hero of the group was definitely Tarson, who returned to community’s field of vision after a prolonged absence from any major tournaments. The Polish terran convincingly took down the fan favorite TLO 2-0 and even managed to take a game out of MC but, unfortunately, could not see his effort reap the necessary results: his loss against HasuObs put him in the third place and out of the tournament at the expense of the German protoss.

Group F was another one topped by a Korean as the GESL runner up Sleep overcame the foreign lines with ease. Sleep dropped only a single set through the entire group stage, putting him in the top four of the best performing players after group stage one together with Yonghwa, Idra and Sase.

The upset in the group came with the elimination of DreamHack Summer’s champion Mana. In a recent interview with us, Mana said that he was one of the favorites to win the group but encountered an unpredicted obstacle in Snute – the Norwegian zerg who replaced Kas just a day before tournament’s start. At that point Mana was 1-1 in series and losing against Snute meant that his only hope for advancing was if Sleep lost both of his remaining matches 0-2. As the Korean decided to instead trample everybody, Mana had to say goodbye to competing at HSC V.

YongHwa’s calm and intelligent PvZ style easily won him the first place in group G. The whole group was played out very straightforwardly and without any turmoil with the exception of DBS not playing any of his matches until the very end of the evening. Thus, the German terran had to play a marathon of three series against Sheth, Yonghwa and Slivko, ending up not winning even a single set.

Group H almost saw the biggest upset of the entire tournament as HSC’s ultimate underdog Monchi conjured a 2-1 victory against Mvp and put the GSL champion one game away from tournament elimination. Luckily for him, Mvp sprung back with a clean and crisp 2-0 against NightEnd, putting him as the standings leader in this knot of a group H.

Second to Mvp finished Golden, the ex-SlayerS zerg now playing for team LighT who, after having increasing amount of success in the past few months, is looking for another great tournament performance. Still, many weaknesses could’ve been seen in Golden’s ZvP and the Korean will have to pick up his play by a lot of he wants to survive a Ro16 that has MC, Sase, YongHwa, Bling and HasuObs.

HomeStory Cup V Day 2

Group E

Group F

MC

3-0

6-2

Sleep

3-0

6-1

HasuObs

1-2

3-4

Snute

2-1

4-3

Tarson

1-2

3-4

Mana

1-2

4-5

TLO

1-2

3-5

Destiny

0-3

1-6

Group G

Group H

YongHwa

3-0

6-1

Mvp

2-1

5-3

Slivko

2-1

4-2

Golden

2-1

5-4

Sheth

1-2

3-4

Monchi

2-1

5-4

DBS

0-3

0-6

NightEnd

0-3

2-6

» Day 3 preview: The Round of 16

HSC V Ro16

Group A

Group B

Group C

Group D

Idra

YongHwa

Sase

Golden

Happy

Nerchio

MC

Mvp

Sleep

BlinG

Slivko

Ret

HasuObs

Snute

Dimaga

Naama

C and D take shape as groups of death, both of them being particularly unforgiving. Although surely one of the favorites for the tournament, MC is in the strong company of Sase, Dimaga and Slivko, who all had solid runs through the Ro32. This will be especially hard for the Ukrainian however – he already lost once to Sase in the first group stage and MC is world-widely known as the master of 2-base timing attacks, something to which Dimaga has shown to be quite vulnerable.

In Group D, Mvp’s Ro8 spot is threatened by Golden and Ret with the first one being the far greater threat. Luckily for Mvp, he’s already beaten the Korean in the very same tournament and Ret was completely outclassed by Happy in day one, so overall it could’ve been much much harder for the GSL champion.

The other two groups are big question marks to say the least. Idra, Happy and Sleep have been doing more than decent in the first round but neither of them is really known for his recent successes. This might be the chance for Idra to show that he’s slump is finally over but just as easily he may fall victim to Happy’s otherworldly micro or Sleep constantly increasing skill level.

Group B has Nerchio, YongHwa, Bling and Snute, neither of which flew in as “the big thing TM”, making this group an even wilder card. In day one, Nerchio crushed ToD, Socke and Naama, Snute delivered an upset by eliminating Mana and YongHwa is an IM-trained protoss so any one of them can be the winner of this pool. The least likely quarter finalist in this company is Bling, who despite having a relatively easy group in the first day ended up with 1-2, advancing to the Ro16 by the skin of his teeth.